How the Pokemon Masters Developers Decided Which Trainers to Include

Pokemon Masters players have already undoubtedly been encountering many of the Trainers the game consists of, some of them old favorites while others being ones players might be less familiar with. With so many Trainers throughout the Pokemon universe to choose from, there were plenty of characters who could’ve found their way into the game, but the game can obviously only fit so many. Yu Sasaki, the producer for the game from the developer DeNA, recently addressed the topic of Trainers in the game and gave some insight into how the characters were chosen.

According to Sasaki, the team had to look at a bunch of different factors including popularity. Characters like Brock and Misty who are found at the beginning of the game are more obvious picks for Trainers that need to be in Pokemon Masters, but Sasaki said it was important to make sure they didn’t use too many Trainers from just one area.

“We looked at a variety of factors, such as the popularity of individual Trainers, but Pokémon is also a franchise with a long and storied history, and we wanted to make sure we drew on Trainers from throughout that history, without having too many Trainers coming from just one area,” Sasaki told Pokemon.com.

For characters who might appear I the game but haven’t had much screen time in past Pokemon adventures, Sasaki said the developers worked with The Pokemon Company to ensure their details were correct. This meant checking to make sure Trainers who are interacting with one another for the first time would do so in a proper, believable way. If a character wouldn’t do something or act a certain way, Sasaki said it was important to make sure the content in the game adhered to those rules.

As for the future of Pokemon Masters Trainers, it looks like there’s a chance of some spin-off characters being added at some point. The Pokemon site asked specifically about characters from Pokemon Snap and Pokemon Colosseum as well as new professor characters, and while no specifics could be given, the developer seems open to the possibility of them being added.

“We are looking into the possibility of featuring some of the professor characters in the future,” Sasaki said. “At this point, we have nothing to share about featuring characters from the spin-off Pokémon games.”

Spin-off Trainers or not, Sasaki also said players can expect to see new content released each month.